


In Between

by Merileigh



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 16:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merileigh/pseuds/Merileigh
Summary: A series of short scenes I wrote after each of the main story quests starting with Deep Secrets of the Earth, because I needed to process and Erend only wanted to talk about hankies. Spoilers for everything after and including the Sunfall quests.





	1. Two Fires

Every time she came back to the daylight world from a delve, it was a different world—and she felt like a different person. But this time it felt like the voices she’d heard had blasted a hole inside of her, and from it she heard them echoing even with her Focus quiet beside her ear.

She was camped on a mountainside in the valley northwest of Mother’s Crown. She could have made for Hunter’s Gathering, but after the glare and clamor of the Sun Ring—was that only two days ago?—she didn’t want people. Gera would have been there, and Kendert, but the memory of their banter and laughter couldn’t warm her.

Instead she sat alone by the fire, watching the rabbit she’d shot earlier cook, its skin browning and fat dripping off it to send up trails of smoke from the burning logs. Her Strider, the second she’d overridden in as many days, stood silently behind her, giving off a soft blue light. She had never worn out a mount, like Sylens had described, but the Strider she’d ridden from the Sun Ring had broken earlier in the day. A rattling in a hind leg had grown into a lurch, and then she’d had to leave it. There was no time for repairs, not when she had an army to catch.

Broadheads moved through the valley below her. Before, she would have watched them to keep an eye out for a threat or an opportunity. Now she wondered why they had been made, what role they had played in nurturing the life around her from nothing, a dead planet. Were they spreading seeds? Turning the earth like the Carja did in the Maizelands to grow food? Had GAIA made them to be mounts for people to ride?

A log shifted, and sparks drifted upward. She remembered one of Rost’s earliest lessons. Heard it again in his voice, All machines are dangerous, Aloy. We must respect their power.

He visited her like this sometimes, in the quiet by her campfire.

“Did you know the machines brought us back to life, Rost?” she asked conversationally as she lifted the rabbit from the fire. She would tell him more the next time she visited his grave—after the battle, after she replaced the Alpha Registry in the heart of the mountain. The next time she talked to him, she might be a different person again.

What would Rost have thought about her other ghosts? She heard their voices now too. Some full of despair but then full of passion for the things they were creating. Some angry, some beyond help. Margo Shĕn, who seemed to feel so much wonder. Travis Tate, his Death Metal, and his words that he poured out slowly. He seemed more amused than anything.

Only one person had been where she had been, and he kept his thoughts to himself. Still, she couldn’t deny that he’d saved her life. She raised a rabbit leg in an ironic salute. “Here’s to mutual self-interest.”

What questions was Sylens asking himself now? As she picked at the rabbit leg, she began to ask him her questions out loud. If she was so valuable that he’d risk his life to keep her alive, then he could damn well talk to her. Or listen, if he wasn’t going to talk.

“What are you thinking, Sylens? …Have you even had time to think?”

Only the crackle of the fire and a pop as a log broke answered her.

“Nothing? Well, we know where HADES is, but why did it say it’s out of my—the entity’s—reach? Is it afraid of Elisabet somehow?

“And where is GAIA? Has HADES taken control from her, isolated her like that man, Travis Tate, said?”

She had already stopped expecting a response. She was talking more to herself when she added, “Did you see the glyph for APOLLO?” She heard his irritated sigh in her ear.

And then he was there, a shimmering blue hologram on the other side of her fire. Glints of blue arced upward between them—sparks from his own campfire. She looked up, surprised, as her Strider trilled behind her, and the beam of its blue light swept across Sylens’ face, a spotlight on his frown.

“What about the glyph?” he asked.

“It looked like a Focus.”

“And?”

“Well, were we meant to have these, all of us? Why do we only have myths and stories and not all of the knowledge they saved for us?”

He looked away, off into the night, wherever he was. “The trail of these questions is long, Aloy. Stop expecting to have all of the answers in a matter of days.

“It’s true we’ve found out more than I hoped because of your connection to Elisabet. But there may be doors that even you can’t open—or that we can’t find.”

She could see that was the only answer to that question she was going to get tonight. No matter what he said to her, he wasn’t happy to not have all the answers he was seeking.

She tried a different trail. “Are you always listening in?”

He answered like she was dragging the words from his mouth. “When it’s important.”

“Not much going on here tonight,” she said, licking fat off her fingertips. “Just a girl and her Strider.”

He looked at her sternly, reminding her of the way Rost had looked sometimes, when he suspected she was deliberately missing the point of a lesson. “You’re riding into a battle, Aloy. Focus.”

He was worried about her, in a way. “I’m not planning to die.”

“Just remember we have larger goals. The real war is just starting.”

She huffed a laugh. “I’ll remember that this isn’t the real war when they’re aiming for my head.”

She knew that would bring a quick end to the conversation. Sure enough, he sat back, pressing his lips together.

“That’s enough for tonight. You’ll be hearing from me. Get some sleep.”

He didn’t wait for her reply. His hologram winked out, leaving her alone again, and her eyes needed to adjust to the softer light of the moon and stars, the dwindling fire.

Tomorrow, or the next day, she would face Helis’s forces. She did as he said, stretching out between the Strider and the fire, her head pillowed on her pack, but she had one last thing to say to him. “I’ll see this through, Sylens.”


	2. Elisabet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy struggles with her new place among the Nora and visits Rost's grave after the battle at All-Mother Mountain.

It wasn’t until she reached the entrance to All-Mother Mountain and saw the smoke rising from the scorched pines that she remembered the cultist fighters and corrupted machines that still occupied the valley floor. They may even be on their way to the mountain; they must have heard the echoing sounds of the battle. There was no quiet way to take down a Thunderjaw.

She jogged back to the others and found them huddled in pairs and small groups, bandaging wounds or talking quietly by flickering candlelight. She found Sona, who was kneeling, bandaging a brave’s leg with quick, efficient movements while the man tried not to grimace. Varl sat beside the brave on the steps to the cradle facility, his face pointed to the far wall but his gaze even more distant than that. He saw her, though.

“Aloy?”

Sona rose to her feet and turned to her.

“I passed other cultist fighters on my way here,” Aloy told the war chief, “and corrupted machines, Watchers and Scrappers. Not many, but they’re still out there. And maybe on their way here.”

Sona nodded, frowning, and her gaze took stock of the handful of braves taking shelter in the mountain, nursing wounds or resting, leaning against walls or each other.

“Braves!” she called, her voice ringing through the cavern. Out of all of them, she was the only one who showed no sign of fatigue. “Our attackers still defile the Embrace! Will we let them flee or with their deaths send a message to our enemies?”

No questions, no complaints—they got to their feet as braves should, every one not too wounded to walk. One voice started the ululation, and then it echoed off the walls in many voices. Aloy shivered, not thinking of the few fighters remaining in the valley but the next battle she had asked them to fight, when those voices might be raised against a swarm of ancient machines.

Sona grasped her upper arm. “Will you fight with us, Aloy?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

She was surprised when Sona took a step back, but then she realized that the war chief meant her to lead the band. Not for the first time that day, she had a wrenching sense of being out of place as she turned toward the entrance and fell into a ground-eating hunter’s lope, Varl and Sona at her back, the others falling in as she passed. She met eyes that were flint hard with fierce joy at the thought of a victory, and other faces that turned away from her, Lansra and Resh, who would not meet the eyes of “the Annointed”.

\---

By the time the lowering sun touched the highest peaks, it was over. The echoes from the mountains must have brought news of their defeat, because the rest of the cultists were retreating toward the main gate when the Nora caught them.

Her pulse drummed faster when she heard the whistles of the braves who found the first group. Trespassers they said, and the band sprinted through the trees. She heard the screams as the first braves broke cover, human screams and machine cries. She nocked two arrows to her bow and followed the glint of a machine’s lens, taking down a corrupted Watcher with one shot. When she looked for her next target, her eyes found Varl’s who was bracing his foot to remove the point of his spear from the chest of one of the attackers. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile, and he hefted his spear as he turned to run after the others, looking something like the brave who had held the gate.

The last group they caught at the burned-out shell of Mother’s Cradle, a small band of heavies, each armed with a gun. She knew the type; they fired slowly, lobbing bombs that hissed and sputtered on the ground before exploding.

Their band was huddled behind two of the lodges and down in the tall grass along the river bank. Aloy caught Sona’s eye. “Tell them to wait,” she said, as she moved in a crouch past the war chief, toward the hill that rose south of the village. “I’ll go in first.”

No stealth approach this time—when she went in, it was on the back of a Strider, balanced low over its neck as they charged down the hill. The war band whooped and yelled as she passed them, flying into the ruined village, sunlight reflecting off her mount’s metal flanks.

After she’d nearly died escaping their base, after the Sun Ring, she wanted their fear. She wanted them to think twice before they faced her. She wanted Helis to ask himself how his Deathbringers and Corruptors and his guns could have failed against a tribe that was on the edge of extinction.

She fitted an arrow to her bow and dropped one cultist with a shot to the head as she charged by. Circling a lodge, she came around for another pass, and by then, the braves were fighting, the hiss and sputter of guns firing, screams, and the battle yells of the Nora rising up around her.

Her hands wrapped tightly around the cords that wound up the Strider’s neck, and she leaned back, her mount responding by rearing and hopping forward on its powerful hind legs. It struck, and she heard the impact and grunt of a man falling under its feet.

In the quiet afterward they walked to Mother’s Heart. Now they were feeling their wounds again and they saw as if for the first time the scorched earth and shattered trees, the smoke haze in the air. Around her she heard hushed murmurs of dismay. She felt it too, a tightness in her chest as they passed the places she’d hunted her entire childhood—burned, dead.

She still rode the Strider; she’d need it for her next journey. The braves seemed willing to walk beside it now. One or two even reached out a hand to touch its shoulder or flank, steadying themselves as they walked. Sona walked ahead, straight-backed. Aloy wondered if the others would be brazen enough to walk so peacefully with a machine under the eyes of their war chief but, for now, they seemed to have adopted the Strider along with a former outcast.

As they walked, the smoke-obscured sky darkened with twilight. Two of the braves had flints, and they lit the torches along the path as they passed. Aloy looked behind to see the trail of lights showing the way, something so familiar. The first day he’d taken her hunting, Rost had shown her which lights to follow home, not to Mother’s Heart or Mother’s Cradle but to their cabin high up a cliff face. For years after that, in the summer, when the nights had been only chilly not bitter cold, she’d used to lie at the edge of the cliff and imagine walking down one of those paths with her mother, toward a fire and the laughter she could hear carried on the breeze. Even now, home was a complicated idea.

At the gates of Mother’s Heart, she stayed mounted as braves went into the village to bring everyone who remained to the mountain. They must have spread the story, because when the Nora came out, in twos and threes, clutching their belongings in their hands, she heard whispers of “the Annointed” and, once or twice, “daughter of the goddess.” As they passed her, they murmured their thanks, asked for her prayers. Some, the children, reached out to brush their fingers against the Strider, amazed to see one up close, or touch her boots.

The battle rush was long gone now. She wrapped her fingers around the cords of the Strider’s neck to stop them shaking and closed her throat tight around something raw that tried to claw its way out. She couldn’t meet their eyes.

She looked past them, and there was Varl, leaning on his spear, watching her. She could see that bone-deep weariness settling back on his shoulders. But underneath something else—awe, or wonder—the face of a man who woke up one day to find himself living one of the old stories.

She wanted the man who had been her spearmate back.

When the rest of the tribe had passed, he came over to her. She reached down to offer him her hand. He grasped her wrist, and she was relieved when she could return the gesture without her hand trembling.

She had to clear her throat to speak. “Varl, take care of yourself,” she said softly.

“And you, Aloy.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “May the goddess protect.”

She nodded and sat back, letting him go, her thoughts already turning toward GAIA.

“I’ll see you in Meridian,” she said, and he nodded, raising his spear to salute her before he turned to follow the others.

“Varl—wait.” He stopped and turned back to her.

“The Carja haven’t seen many Nora,” she said, thinking of the bald comments she still heard every time she went to the city. “And they can be…” Varl raised his eyebrows. “Stuck up,” she finished, shrugging one shoulder.

“Just—don’t listen to their talk.”

He smiled, but there was a grim cast to it. “What’s Meridian like?”

She pulled one leg up to rest across the Strider’s back and grasped her shin, searching the dark line of the horizon for words to describe Meridian. “Big,” she said, smiling wryly as she met his eyes. “Loud.”

“But it’s…beautiful. I haven’t seen anything else like it.”

“You don’t remember the Red Raids, do you?” he said, not meeting her eyes. “So many Nora were taken to Meridian as prisoners and murdered in the Sun Ring.”

“I know, Varl,” she said gently. She hadn’t forgotten what Meridian meant to the Nora, not really—but the city, even with all its complicated past, was so much more to her. “I’ve seen the Sun Ring. The new king has turned it into a memorial to the people who died, people of all tribes.

“Meridian is changing. It’s worth saving. The Carja are worth saving.”

His smile wasn’t fully there, but it looked like it came easier this time. “Then we’ll do what we can.”

She nodded. “I’ll see you there.”

She watched him go until he’d disappeared around a bend in the path, then turned the Strider’s head west, toward Rost’s grave and the empty house that had been her home.

\---

There was more she should tell him, but the words burned in her throat. She turned to go. But when she bent to pick up her Focus, the raw thing she’d felt outside the gate to Mother’s Heart was in her chest, stealing her breath.

She sat on the stone that covered Rost’s grave. Her whole body was trembling now, and she hugged her knees into her chest, trying to will the shudders to stop. What would Rost say if he saw her like this? Out of control. Afraid.

One of the blurry objects in her range of vision resolved itself into her pack. How many times had Rost sent her to check her supplies and replenish her arrows? It hadn’t taken her long to learn as a child that when she showed any signs of impatience or temper—so, too many times to count—Rost would send her out to fill her medicine pouch or drop a handful of shards on her lap to be crafted into arrowheads.

She dragged the pack closer and dug out shards, a bundle of wire, thin stalks of ridgewood, and two stones small enough to fit her hands. “All right, Rost. I do need arrows.” Her voice was shaking, too.

Breathe. Steady hands.

One of the stones was flat and smooth, and she laid it down on the rock in front of her. The other was rounded on one side; the other side had been carefully sharpened to hold an edge. She’d carried these stones since Rost had put her first bow into her hands. She found a shard about the right size and shape and picked up the sharpened stone to make the first groove in the metal.

And stopped.

The stone felt strange, unfamiliar. And her hand—it wasn’t her hand. These were Elisabet’s hands. They shook so badly, the stone and the shard fell clattering to the rock.

As if she was somewhere in the night sky or watching with Rost from the grave, she saw herself as she truly was. A younger version of Elisabet, her hands, her face, with wild hair partially tamed by braids and beads, dressed in coarse fur and leather. Someone who knew nothing. Someone who couldn’t fix what Elisabet had made with her hands. An imperfect copy made by a broken machine.

She heard her own choked sobs from that distance and couldn’t feel the tears on her cheeks.

At some point during that long night, she must have slept. She woke lying on Rost’s grave surrounded by a dusting of snow and the parts for arrows. The sun was halfway to its highest point.

Her face was cold and clammy. She rubbed her hands over her cheeks, and felt flakes of ice fall away from her lashes. Her Focus was gone.

That got her up on hands and knees, passing her hands across the snow until her fingers found the small device.

“Lucky,” she muttered under her breath, irritated that she hadn’t remembered to put it back on. Her voice was hoarse, but she wouldn’t think about the reason. Move, don’t think. She gathered up the ridgewood, the wire, the shards. She hesitated over the stone tools, but finally tucked them into her pack as well. Rost had made them for her.

She was standing to leave when her eyes caught on a bone white object in the snow, the carved talisman Rost had given her the afternoon before the Proving. Kneeling, she ran her fingers over the curves of the boar’s tusk, the holes Rost had drilled. She had left it here the first time she had come to visit Rost’s grave. She picked it up, weighing it in her hand a moment before she slipped the cord over her head.

“Rost,” she said, clearing her throat to get her voice back. “I don’t know if you ever thought of me as your daughter. But…you’re the only father I’ve known.” She wrapped her fingers around the talisman. “I remember everything you taught me.”

She stood. “I’ll come back, after it's over. If I can.”

It was past time for her to be on the trail. Her entire body ached, but she welcomed the feeling, along with the sun on her face and the cold bite in the air. Before she shouldered her pack, though, she reached for her bow and took a shooting stance in front of one of the wooden practice dummies, notched and worn with all the damage she’d inflicted on it as a child.

Nock. Draw. Aim. Her shoulders and arms felt strong, and it felt good to draw the bow, stretch her muscles. Aiming came as easily as her breaths. She fired three shots—target, head, and leg—before she lowered her arms. The arrows had sunk deep, and she left them there.

This was hers, at least. She knew how these skills had come to her, through sweat and aches and scars. Failing and trying again until she got it. Not like ancient doors that opened for the first time in hundreds of years for her, calling her by another name.

One last look at the house, Rost’s grave, the snow-covered trees, and she was off, jogging down the trail to the zip wire that would take her to the valley floor.

She was strapping her pack to the back of the Strider when she heard Sylens’ voice in her ear.

“Aloy?”

She tightened the last of the straps to the Strider’s hindquarters.

“Aloy. Answer me.”

“Frustrating isn’t it. To get no response," she replied, mildly.

“Your Focus was offline last night.”

That observation she answered only with silence. She vaulted onto the Strider, swinging her leg over its back.

“Aloy, as soon as we can get into GAIA Prime, we’ll have everything we need. We can change the fate of this world. …It’s almost over.”

She had been created for these next few days. “I’m on my way.”

One hand wrapped around Rost’s talisman, she rode into the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the game, Aloy comes to terms with being a clone in minutes, basically, but I felt like she needed a battle and a good cry after that.


	3. We're With You

She had just passed Free Heap, riding south for the Sacred Land and the ruins that held the ancient armor, when the scrub three paces in front of her exploded into flame. Beneath her, her Charger reared and careened off the path. Its bucks rattled her teeth, but she managed to stay on, using her seat and hands to bring the machine to a halt.

Away on the walls of the settlement, she could see a figure with one hand raised, the other supporting a heavy cannon on her hip. “Don’t pass us by, Aloy Machine-hunter!” came the distant shout. Petra.

“Was that an invitation or a warning?” Aloy shouted back.

“An invitation! At this distance, I had to say it loud and clear!”

“I heard you,” Aloy said when she reached the gate and Petra met her with a grin that creased the corners of her eyes. “All the way down to my teeth.”

Petra laughed. “I have you to thank for this voice, flame-hair. Come share our fire for a while.”

\---

The sun was lowering in the west, but the Oseram were still working. Their shouts and banter mixed with the clang of steel on steel to create what the Oseram called the music of the forge. No Carja chanting—the Oseram heard their music in their bones and through the soles of their feet.

Aloy hadn’t passed two steps through the gate before she heard Petra’s low whistle over her shoulder.

“That’s a make I haven’t seen before.” She was looking at Sylens’ lance with narrowed eyes. Aloy pulled the weapon over her shoulder and placed it into Petra’s hands.

“Come with me. I want to look at this in the last of the light.”

Aloy followed as Petra strode up the stairs in her heavy boots to her work table overlooking the canyon mouth that led to the Heap.

“You’ve rebuilt the bridge already,” Aloy said, surprised to see a new bridge built with pale, unweathered beams standing where she’d brought the old one down on the heads of a bandit clan, the road beneath cleared of debris and rutted deep with cart tracks.

Petra seemed not to hear her. She was examining every angle of the lance, running her fingers over the fittings and along the edge of the blade. “We work fast,” she finally replied, straightening to hand the lance back. “When we don’t have bandits keeping us from it.”

“That’s an impressive blade,” she added, nodding at the lance. Her face was strangely solemn. “And none of it forged new. Every bit of that was made by the Old Ones. There’s a story there.” She met Aloy’s eyes, one eyebrow raised with an unspoken question.

“There is, but I don’t know it. This was given to me.”

“That and what else,” Petra muttered, and Aloy felt the tightness in her chest that came with remembering the rest of what Sylens had given her, an identity, a responsibility. A crisis. She shouldn’t stay too long.

“What is this?” Petra asked, tapping the Corruptor override processor at the end of the lance shaft.

“A part I harvested,” Aloy answered. “From a Corruptor. It overrides machines.”

“So that’s how you get your friendly beasts.” Smile lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. “Your Charger better not look too docile out there, or my people might scrap it for parts.”

“They might be surprised if they tried.” She couldn’t help but return Petra’s smile, even with her thoughts miles down the road. “Petra, I should—”

“And this?” Petra interrupted, nodding at the master override.

Aloy hesitated long enough that Petra crossed her arms over her chest and gave her a look that she imagined might shut down an Ealdorman mid-argument.

“It’s a weapon. To kill a Metal Devil.”

Petra’s eyes searched her face for a moment more, then she turned to squint out at the horizon. “Fire and spit,” she swore under her breath.

Aloy took in a breath to speak, but Petra beat her to it.

“We like it out here,” she said. “Too far out in the dust for Meridian to bother with us.

“But I still hear rumors,” she added, turning back to Aloy. “I hear you’ve got Sunfall spitting like hot metal in the slack tub.”

One corner of Aloy’s mouth lifted in a smile that was nearly a grimace. “They really give me too much credit,” she said. Somehow Vanasha and Uthid had vanished from those stories; she wished she had that talent.

She traced one thumb over the band of blue lights around the base of the master override and took a deep breath. “But Petra, it’s more than that. There’s a faction of the Shadow Carja, the Eclipse. They’re serving a…machine-mind that lives in a Metal Devil. It wants to raise an army of ancient machines.

“And it’s already started. They’re going to attack the Spire at Meridian.”

Petra leaned back against her work table. Her smile was back, but her gaze was hard enough to strike sparks. “So we’re going to Meridian. Looks like the daughter will get the chance to live up to her mother.” She laughed and patted the cannon that rested quiet on the table, her scrap-spitting beast.

Aloy could only nod, feeling a sickeningly deep pit open in her stomach at the thought that she was asking Petra and her people to stand against the swarm, so many with only spears and bows. So many of them would die.

Petra’s eyes gentled as she read Aloy’s expression, and one corner of her mouth quirked up in half a smile. “Hey, I built part of that city. Can’t let anything happen to my elevator; there’s too much of my sweat in it.

“Besides, if we sit here, how long will it be before they come knock our door down?”

She straightened and put a hand on Aloy’s shoulder to steer her toward the stairs. “We’ll strike the blow at Meridian. Now come on—I promised you a fire.”

\---

The Oseram didn’t argue when Petra told them where they were going and what they would be facing. But the arguments about the best places to make a stand, the tactics that would be most effective, how much Scrappersap to take—those carried on long after the sun had gone down.

A mouthful, two, of Scrappersap burned a trail down Aloy’s throat and spread warmth out from her belly, and for a little while it was enough to just sit in the circle of their voices. To her right, Petra and Kaeluf were discussing modifications they could make to the cannon on the road. Across the fire, two men bellowed the chorus of Ersa’s Escape—_WATCH ‘ER BOYS, WATCH ‘ER BOYS, OR ELSE YOU’VE GONE AND LOST HER BOYS_—drumming their heels in the dirt. Beneath that, their voices lowered, a group of three argued about who would stay behind to keep the forge burning.

She listened, and time passed until the fire had burnt down, and the faces across from her were obscured by shadows.

_…shadowy faces, under a blank open sky. I told them the world ended with a bang—_ She heard Margo Shĕn’s voice in her head so clearly. As if she were back in GAIA Prime’s control room, she saw them drawn in light, the Alphas sitting in their circle. Blue afterimages limned dry bodies slumped in chairs or fallen where they’d tried too late to run.

This had been a mistake. There was no time left.

She sucked in a breath and pushed herself off the bench, only thinking that she should have been miles away by now. She was halfway to the gate—there was the blue light shining from her Charger—when a hand caught her arm, and she cast a glance back to see Petra.

“Petra, there’s no time.”

“I know,” Petra replied, but she lifted her hand only to grip Aloy’s shoulder instead, holding her there for a moment. “Just…remember we’re with you, Aloy. We’ll be there.”

Aloy tried to manage a smile. “I’ll see you.”

Petra let her go with a push toward the Charger. As Aloy hit the road south at a gallop, she looked back to see Petra standing at the gate, watching her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about starting this one earlier, just after Aloy leaves Sylens' workshop, but Petra had other ideas.


End file.
